


Leitmotif

by Meredydd



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-11
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2017-11-11 22:57:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/483823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meredydd/pseuds/Meredydd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for prompts during Sherlockmas' "Sherlock's Summer Vacay": Molly struggles not to share Sherlock's secret with someone who is brokenhearted after The Fall.  Also, Sherlock and John get drunk on Pimm's cups and make out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leitmotif

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sherlockmas' "Sherlock's Summer Vacay".

The morgue’s smell never bothered Molly; she had grown used to it early on and barely noticed it anymore, save for when she returned after a long holiday or someone pointed it out as it clung to her coat in a meeting. Now, though, standing next to Detective Inspector Lestrade ( _Call me Greg, please!_ ), she hated the smell. Hated how it made his nose wrinkle, how it made him press his lips together to suppress the urge to gag. “Sorry,” she muttered, “it’s the formalin.” _And death and dried blood and,depending on who I have open, whatever was in their stomach last..._

“‘salright,” he said through tight lips. “I’ve smelled worse, I’m sure.”

Molly’s only response was a slight smile before she turned away to rummage through the file cabinet for the paper copies of Sherlock’s falsified data. _Lord, give me strength. This man is...was... his friend. Sherlock did this for him, don’t fuck it up now!_ She barely met his eyes as she handed over the copies. “The, um, originals are at the magistrate’s. I don’t get to keep them...”

“It’s alright,” he repeated. “I just...” Greg paused, shook his head, and just...stared. Stared unseeingly at the papers in his hand. “I still don’t believe this. I’ve known people who topped themselves and Sherlock...”

The tremor in Greg’s voice froze Molly in her tracks. Guilt, more than anything else, kept her from turning. She was a terrible liar--she had tried to tell Sherlock but he wouldn’t listen. It was how her Mum found out about her tattoo last year, and how Louis from the sandwich shop had figured out she wasn’t really in Birmingham last month but had tried out a new deli instead... _Bite your tongue! Don’t talk, don’t look, don’t...just don’t!_ Head ducked awkwardly, she edged past Greg and lurched towards her office door and the safety it promised. A small, rough sound--not a sob but not really anything else--stopped her in her tracks. A man like Greg Lestrade shouldn’t be reduced to crying in a morgue, Molly thought, guilt now nearly overwhelming. _You did this, you and Sherlock both. This is your own fault._ She forced her lips to move, not sure what words would come out, relieved and startled when she heard her own voice say, “Coffee?”

They agreed that the office coffee was absolute shit, and somehow found themselves at a small Greek place a few streets from Bart’s. The coffee was strong enough to raise the dead, Molly pronounced, then froze. “That... I mean...”

“Don’t tiptoe, Molly... I know you’re hurt by this, too. Maybe more than anyone.” He stirred his coffee slowly, watching the wake of the plastic stirrer as if it could tell him all of the answers.

“No... I...” She closed her eyes, shook her head. “Greg, Sherlock was an arse. A rude, often cruel, unmitigated arsehole. He was also passionate about his work, brilliant and, if he let himself be, he could be a friend. He helped people, whether he admitted it or not, and he wasn’t any of those things Moriarty said. And I thought I loved him. I mean,” she paused, took a too-hot sip of her coffee, and forced herself onwards, ignoring Greg’s startled stare as best she could, “I did love him, and I do, but not like I thought I did. I loved the idea of him... I thought I’d die if he ever looked at me like I dreamed he could but I know the Sherlock I was panting over wasn’t real. The real Sherlock...” she stopped, biting down hard on her own tongue to stop the words. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “I’m pants at this.”

“Sherlock,” Greg said slowly, “was an arse. And a friend. And a good man.” He closed his eyes and blew out a rough breath, an echo of his earlier sob. “I keep telling myself it’s a nightmare. I want to hate him some mornings... Christ, the paperwork! But most of the time...hell, I didn’t stop reaching for my phone to call him until just yesterday. Poor John’s been answering. Every goddamned time.”

Molly stared at Greg’s hands on the table, sure and strong and calloused and tan, tan except for the pale band where his ring once lay. _I suppose the PE teacher was the last straw..._ Without giving herself time to second-guess, she inched her fingers closer, until they touched his. “Maybe, one day, we’ll understand why he did it and not be so angry and sad.” It was the truth but not the bit she wanted to tell.”

Greg turned his hands palms-up and closed his fingers over hers, holding her like she was a baby bird. “Do you like Italian?”

***

Dinner turned to coffee dates, which slid towards dinner dates. Sherlock haunted their conversations, but Molly found it easier to lie about him, easier to say the words “dead” and “suicide.” Sometimes, John joined them and he _looked_ at her, looked at her like Sherlock had, and she knew that, somehow, he didn’t believe a word, he knew Sherlock was not really dead, but he never tried to corner her, never tried to get proof. One night, when it was just her and Greg, he surprised her by commenting on John’s stares and pinched expressions. “Poor sod is in love with Sherlock and just can’t...” he paused. “Sorry.”

“I told you,” she chided gently, pouring more wine for them both, “I’m not pining for Sherlock anymore.”

“It’s been a year,” Greg said in something like agreement. “Molly...”

“It’s your turn to pick a movie,” she said, and sat back against the soft cushions of her sofa. She felt his stare on her and took a deep sip of her wine.  
She wasn’t surprised by the sex; she had known they would go to bed together, known for sure, the night they had talked about John, the night he made her watch three episodes of _Fawltey Towers_ and teased her about her collection of American sitcoms on DVD. She _was_ surprised by the intensity, the sheer _need_ they both brought to the act, the desperation to be touched and wanted and to pleasure and be pleasured. Sex was the one place Sherlock’s ghost never appeared. Sore from exertions, sticky from release and breath sweet with wine, they had lain half on and half off her bed, a silent agreement that they needed one another and fit like two broken pieces of a lost puzzle, humming in the air between them.

Greg made her feel secure, made her feel stable, and she dreaded the destruction that would come when he found out the secret she shared with a not so dead man. A year after they became an Us and six months after they moved in together, Molly swallowed her fear and said ‘yes’. “What’s the matter?” Greg asked later, tangling his fingers in her hair, wincing as she ghosted hers over his spent prick. “You’re awfully quiet.”

“I have something to tell you and I’m not sure how you’ll take it.” Not a total lie, she told herself. It just wasn’t the secret she cared about. “My family...well...they’re obscenely wealthy.”

Greg’s laugh was a bark and crack. “That’s it? Cor, if that’s the worst you’ve been keeping from me, we’ll be fine!”

Molly nodded, sick to her stomach, and closed her eyes.

***

Molly smiled at her mum from the head of the ornate table and squeezed Greg’s hand. “Alright?”

“There’s obscenely wealthy, then there’s downright dirty-rich, Molls,” he muttered. “What the Hell am I getting into?”

She giggled. “Don’t worry. I’m the black sheep so we won’t be expected to attend all the house parties and fetes and teas and…Greg, you look sick!”

He grinned back. “I dunno…if I’d have known I was marrying a bloody princess, I might have changed my mind.”

_Not a princess, just a liar._ “We’re not nobility. Just stonking rich. And it’s my father’s business and my mum’s inheritance. “ She shrugged, fiddled with the lace on her skirt—one of her concessions to her mother’s wedding fever. “Dance with me?”

He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Sherlock…”

“Would have hated this,” she said, smiling. She knew that for a fact—he had said as much when he sent her one of his infrequent check-in texts, signed “Violet Sigerson.” The name had given her pause—it was the first time he had signed one, and it was a feminine name at that. The image of him dressed as a woman was arresting—he could, she mused as Greg led her to the dance floor in the white tent set aside for it, be either quite beautiful or extremely ugly if he tried to appear heternormatively female. She let Greg twirl her into the middle of the floor and had a glimpse of John disappearing from the tent, following a leggy redhead and she felt her eyes widen.

“What?”

“Ah, too much champagne. Spin me again!”

_Coda_

The sound of the small band Molly’s parents had hired for the wedding drifted with them towards the small hill that marked the edge of the Hooper’s property. They were both well tipsy off the Pimms cups that seemed to never empty, a fresh one appearing as soon as the previous was drained. John felt like a prat for being drunk off of Pimms but… well, he decided, there were worse things. “I knew you weren’t dead, you know.”

Sherlock—Violet—smiled. “You’ve said as much. Molly still doesn’t know I’m here. Do not, under any circumstances, tell her. It’s…”

“I know,” John said, his laugh bitter and tired as he plucked Sherlock’s empty cup away. “Where the Hell did you get the hair?”

“A very good wigmaker in Vienna,” Sherlock replied primly, his voice once again his own and not the smoky, sultry, feminine tone John had heard in his ear a week before in Camden Market, not the one that had made him smile and turn only to go weak at the knees and damn near faint when he realized… “John, you know that I can’t stay this time, either.”

“It’s almost worse, you know,” John snapped, flinging himself onto the grass and falling back to pretend he was not looking at Sherlock sitting primly beside him, long legs crossed at the knee, manicured fingers curled into the springy grass. “If you’d stayed gone, I could have just… just known, in my heart of hearts, you were alive. Now… now I have to say goodbye again.” _Fucking Pimms. I should complain to the company. Your product makes people say stupid shit._

“It’s not any easier for me, you know,” Sherlock said, voice so low and quiet it was almost inaudible over the faint music and the hum of summer insects. He leaned over John, eyes dark and wide. “I had to come back. I hate weddings but I knew it would be hard for you.”

“You did, huh?” John couldn’t look away from the lush mouth so close to his own. It wasn’t the first time he had thought of it, thought of Sherlock like that, and they both knew it. The Work had been utmost, the Work had been pride of place in Sherlock’s heart, John was sure of it, and had tamped down the desire, the need, and dated and loved and lusted and in the background, knew Sherlock would always win if he had to choose between the woman in his bed or the man shouting for him to hurry along, the game was on! Without thinking too hard on it, John leaned in and pressed his lips to Sherlock’s, feeling the tension ratchet through the other man via the simple touch of their mouths. He sighed and raised a hand, pushing aside the long fall of red hair and damning it for being in the way, for not being short and dark and a riot of waves and curls. The neck, though, that was familiar and _Sherlock_ and John clung to it as Sherlock’s mouth opened against his and the first touch of tongue against lip sent them both back into the grass. “I hate this outfit,” John grumbled against Sherlock’s mouth. “Fake tits always bothered me!”

“I’m not a fan myself,” Sherlock admitted, hands seizing John’s arse and squeezing, forcing groins closer and causing both men to moan as their erections ground together. “Can we leave? Can we go back to Baker Street now? Please? Molly won’t care and Lestrade is too busy trying to work up the courage to take her to the broom closet in the house for a quickie to notice…”

John laughed into Sherlock’s shoulder. “How long do I have you for?” he finally asked. “Before you have to run again?”

“A day. Twenty two hours, to be precise.”

“Let’s go then. This needs to last me until you’re back again.”


End file.
